Slashdot Mirror
Copy Protection a Crime Against Humanity
Trevalyx writes "An article over at Wired looks into the relation between copy protection and the reality of a rational amount of 'wiggle room' that is typically provided by the legal system. It's a topic covered often on Slashdot, but it's still a good read. Should be accompanied by a visit to the Electronic Frontier Foundation for your Daily Dose of Defending Digital Freedom." The article does a good job of giving examples of legal leeway that's granted every day.
DRM is a perfect solution for an imperfect world - A solution that ignores the fact that people are, by our very nature, unlikely to stick exactly to rules. Grey exists because we don't like black and white as the only two choices, and because we're quite capable of defining our own middle ground.
Until we can develop computers that are able to do the kind of fuzzy matching that the human brain does naturally, turning control of creativity over to them is fraught with risk. All it takes is an incorrect statement somewhere in the source, or the confluence of a couple of seemingly benign factors, and suddenly you can't watch that DVD you just bought - But you can't take it back because you broke the seal on the packaging.
The thing the article doesn't go into is the "analogue hole". Human creativity is very good at working around restrictions. We designed ladders to reach high places, and windows because it's nice to be able to see out without letting the weather in.
They can DRM CDs all they want - I've got a DiscMan with optical out, and a soundcard with optical in. Sure, I'll have to do it manually, but I can still make perfect digital copies of whatever CDs I own. Similarly, people will find ways around this "broadcast flag", even if it's just going back to VHS and a capture card. Old hardware's not just going to disappear.
Finally, as much as xxAA would love to, they don't control the legislative process in other countries. Until they do, there's nothing they can do to make companies build DRM-compliant devices for other markets. Some of them will probably deliberately ensure their devices aren't DRM-compliant, if they've got some marketroids with a clue. How do you stop people importing "un-broken" hardware?
"God, root, what is difference?" - Pitr, userfriendly
Okay, I've seen all the first posts about how crimes against humanity only applying to crazed mad dictators with axes to grind...but really, isn't the current trend of law just prelimenary for more of the same? People dismiss speeding laws as irrelevant almost every day, lives are lost, but how many people seriously consider abdicating their ability to excede those limits every day? Most of us probably don't know anyone who even might be a terrorist, but we'd probably put our foot down if the government decided to screen each and everyone in the country "just in case". The same applies to any law, maybe especially intellectual property laws because they're restricting the loose quality of ideas. Fair use, public domain, censorship...I suppose they're not exactly in league of mass murder. Swing them on a rope enough though, and you've got a dandy oppression.
I'm afraid that it doesn't work that way, people are far too ignorant and lazy to care about "fair use" anymore. Just look at the iTunes Music store. Of course, everyone is just so enchanted with the idea of being able to buy music one song at a time for cheap and instant gratification that they are willing to overlook the "minimal" DRM. Well I say that any DRM is too much DRM.
It seems that I am in the minority, however. Everyone insists on racking up insightful mods by saying how Apple couldn't get the "big five" to do it without DRM. Why? CDs don't have DRM (at least, not yet, and not on a large scale, I'm sure this statement is a little bit shaky but I haven't encountered any of these evil CDs yet). Why do the rules change when we are talking about files instead of plastic discs? Because files are easy to copy? CDs are very easy to copy too.
Oh well, I'm sure that everyone will just reply by saying how stupid I am and that they are so much smarter and more insightful that I am. So whatever.
'DDDDF' sounds like a report card.
Jason
ProfQuotes
Fair use not available? We will not buy!
Right. Remember the old digital video format, what was it called, DVD? It had regional lockout and macrovision copy prevention. A huge consumer backlash ensued and nobody bought any DVDs. The studios changed their minds pretty quickly after that one, heh. I guess we really taught them a lesson there.
If the DRM / digital world sucks (for copyright or anything else) I believe that the market will have the right response....
The problem I see with this response (and it is quoted quite often on here) is that "the market" is deciding in favor of DRM as we speak. Go down to your local store and look at the selection of DVDs vs VHS. There's this little thing called CSS on DVDs, remember? That's where the fun all started, at least in the recent round of DRM attempts.
Ask your average person about DRM and they won't have a clue what you are talking about, because it has been implemented so seamlessly. Sure, they might get annoyed at the "no fast forward" parts of DVDs (the ones that infuriate me personally...) and they might have to buy a little box if they had an old TV with only coax in, but overall it does what they want and they're happy.
Oh and remember Macrovision? VHS has also had DRM for years and years, it was just much less sophisticated. Still quite difficult to bypass though.
Like boiling lobsters, you just raise the temperature a tiny bit at a time and people don't realize they're being baked.
I think the true travesty (and this article sort of hints at it but doesn't pursue) is that some day, we won't have DVD players. A thousand years in the future, there are going to be worthless chips of plastic and metal dug up and they will have no clue what it all means. They kept copious records back in "the old days" too, and we are able to piece together some of what happened and the culture back then thanks to it. Imagine how much harder the job will be when they have to go decyphering encryption schemes on top of all the other problems.
Hell, forget about 1000 years in the future -- think 50 years in the future! It makes me depressed just thinking about it. Even without DRM in the picture it's going to be depressingly difficult to keep updating all our media. Add a million DRM schemes and it starts looking like an insurmountable problem.
Cryptic Allusion - New Mac and Dreamcast Games!
Nope, not iTunes. And definitely not some POS p2p spyware app laden with crappy rips. But free nontheless... (say it with me) usenet.
The other day I burned a CD for my cousin to listen to on his way to work. He bought a CD player for his car that plays MP3 discs despite the fact he rarely uses the net and probably doesn't even know how to spell usenet. He's into country but I make it my mission to widen people's horizons - the CD has music from the US, Sweden, Mexico, Russia, the UK, and even Egypt - all brought to him, via me, via USENET.
I'm working on "remastering" a few rock concerts that were sent to me (in a box of CDRs) by way of a friend of a friend in germany. See, the US hardly ever has live concert shows any more - but "rockpalast" is, so far as I know, still running. So, soon as I am happy with the results I'll commit these shows to MPEG2 streams and share'em with the world - most likely on DVD, since uploading even one would take me weeks online. What those broadband equipped friends do with this "data," however, is beyond my control.
I have several CDs worth of live SNL music performances (as well as a few favorite skits) that were ripped from my direcTV tivo. The quality is typical sucky direcTV, but let's face it: that's about as good as you're gonna get nowdays, and it's still (arguably) better than VHS. I also have pretty much every video PJ harvey has made - again, thanks to rips I made from my tivo when M2 was having its "women in rock" week.
All real world examples illustrate just exactly why most of this is irrelevant. I used to be pretty zealous about these legislations, but frankly I jsut don't care any more. Why? Because there's nothing at all stopping your fave garage band from producing their own release and getting exposure via the internet. (In fact, I've downloaded several this way and still have a few of these "underground" releases in my collection because they were actually GOOD.) There's also little (ie pretty much nothing except bandwidth or time) to stop me from ripping my fave music and sharing it with the world - or to prevent me from sharing my collection of SNL skits and music vids - in fact, I've shared Cdds with several friends.
None of these laws matter because they relate only to commerce. Sure, a few folks have put them to the test (and more power to them) by intentionally breaking the law and then taking the case to court. But for the "average user" (or even the "power user") who isn't an activist or a business owner, the laws mean pretty much nothing. They didn't stop the worldwide digital release of the new Matrix, they didn't stop me from recording countless hours of TV via my PC - nor could they.
I don't support these new "corporate legislations," nor do I support most publishers (no magazines, no pay tv, never listen to radio and watch TV only until I get so fed up with commercials I close the damn window on my desktop to bask in the silence.) Yet I'm still (again, arguably) better informed than most people I know because "most people" let Dan Rather spoon feed them their only news each day and probably have never even heard of WIRED or /. My music collection is more diverse than it's ever been in my entire 40 years of life (and I was pretty "out there" even in the 70's). I have hours and hours of various TV shows, movies, and music videos. And even if we woke up tomorrow and all media (including TV) was digital and had these "broadcast flags" and watermarks, you know it would be only a matter of days before workarounds were spread across the world. In the meantime the greater audience wouldhave been alienated and the proverbial other shoe would, no doubt, fall.
which is lawyerese for "don't sweat the small stuff".
Try to imagine a world in which every detail of every law were perfectly and literally enforced. Imagine going to prison because you didn't file a change of address with the Selective Service when you moved. Imagine getting a ticket every time you switched on your turn signal 199 feet from an intersection instead of 200 feet.
There's an old bit of engineering wisdom that says that systems with loose tolerances tend to be more reliable. A Mickey Mouse watch with some slop in the gears will keep running if a little dust gets in, an expensive precision chronometer may not. Societies seem to work the same way, which is why we have laws full of words like "reasonable" and "prudent".
"justify his mp3 collection" -- OK, good example. Dunno about the author, but my MP3 collection consists entirely of imports from purchased CDs and has never gone anywhere except my iPod. In a world where "fair use" is defined by common sense and/or judges, this works. My interests and the interests of the royalty collectors are satisfied. In a DRM world, some bureaucratic twit of a computer might have prevented me from listening in my car.
Here's a thought. All the IP laws are a form of market regulation. Businesses are all "regulation is bad". So, why don't we get rid of copyright, trademarks and patents just so big business can have the totally unregulated market they so desire?
> Hitler killing 6 million Jews and 4 million non-Jews is a "crime against humanity".
Exactly. Murdering people is a crime against the victims, their friends and their family. Murdering millions is an unimagineable crime.
But what makes it a crime against humanity as well as one against humans is this: The Nazis attempted to wipe out an entire race with all their genes and their unique culture.
A society that restricts the spread of information and ideas hampers cultural progress massively. And making it illegal to transfer our knowledge and works of art to reliable media and new display platforms will deny future generations their cultural heritage.
Our culture, our knowledge, all our achievements will be lost to our children. This is a crime against humanity, too.
That's frogs. A lobster couldn't get out of the slowly heating pot even if it did realize what was happening. A frog could jump out but doesn't. Anyway, lobsters are properly thrown into a rolling boil.
I can use condoms to protect myself from STD's and to prevent pregnancy. So the choice of word doesn't matter much to me. But if you're my girlfriend, well, then you're just getting screwed.
<a href="http://www.joblessjimmy.com">Work is dumb and so is Jobless Jimmy.</a>
Dictators and Empires come and go. Yet the books remain. Lock the books away inside encrypted silver discs and the collective heritage of 10 millenia of human experience and striving suddenly comes into jeopary.
Your view of history is far too limited.
Society is what it is today because of ancient versions of Napster.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
If something is copy-protected well enough, then it will never become available to the PD. Imagine modern scholars trying to brute-force the 128-bit-IDEA encryption on Shakespeare's Macbeth. (Assuming they were licensed to use the IDEA patent, of course. ;-) (Have they had enough time, or would we need a few more universe-ages?)
If it doesn't reach PD, then when can the progress happen? It can't be built upon by the population at large, unless -- do you really think it makes sense that I should purchase a license to build upon "Steamboat Willy"? (Whoever thought that up, is dead and he got the 28 years that he expected. His incentive was fulfulled.) And while I know they are probably out there on the MAME-warez sites, I remember there are many C64 games that I don't have today not just because I got bored with them, but because they were inconvenient to take into the future. Would any of that stuff still be around in 2073 when it falls into PD, without the w4r3zd00dz? Funny: I bought Doom from ID and it wasn't copy-protected at all, but I know Romero's beautiful WADs will still be around in 2083, and no help from the w4r3zd00dz will be necessary. Little Johnny will find the files on grandpa's old file server, because grandpa was able to maintain continuous storage and migrate data, even though he never interfered with ID's rightful monopoly. And Grandpa learned from history so that's why there weren't any more Library-of-Alexandria-like incidents.
Wow, think of it: that great level, E1M3, will still be in people's minds a century from now. I really believe that. People will still see it and it will be an almost "real" place. The ideosphere was permanently enlarged. The arts were promoted. I won't kid anyone; I think the w4r3zd00dz might end up being responsible for that, but ID's decision to not use copy-protection is what guaranteed it.
If there are restrictions on access, then the very purpose of copyright has been subverted. It's a trade secret, not a published work. If it's copy-protected, then the progress of the arts and sciences is not being promoted.
And that's ok -- nobody should, of course, be required by society to act so altruisticly, because we are free men and not servants of some dystopian collectivist society, and we live for our own desires. But there are consequences that go with not working with Us. If it's copy-protected, then We should not extend copyright-protection to it. Society offered the creator a deal and the creator declined and decided to market his effort a different way. Fair enough. I think that's probably foolish, but it's his call to make.
But people who claim the privileges (monopoly) and yet reject the associated obligations (ease of data migration, format conversion, etc), are dishonest and not acting in good faith. Those who try to get such Free Lunches should, IMHO, be treated to "special" standards of respect or consideration, that are different than the treatment extended to decent folk. Their kind should not be encouraged. And remember that true Law is not set by those people in Washington, but by We The People. You can subvert my government, but you can't subvert me. Whitewash and social-engineer and bribe and play your games, but the ethical principles from which decisions are made, remain immutable.
And so I choose for the reality to be: copyright exists .. in situations where it is appropriate. The use of copy-protection influences my judgement of that situation. Catch up, Washington.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
The damage has already been done.
The true intent of copyright is to propagate art and literature. Dupes like you have already bought into the ideas that artists have the right to destroy what they create.
Once they let it out of the studio, they do not.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
How about resale? Can you alter the DRM signature on those files you've paid for to reassign them to someone else, i.e. can there be a second hand market for those tracks?
How about sampling parts of it, or reproducing it for use in teaching or research? Ah, you say, I can burn it to CD, and copy that into MP3, and work from that - substantional artifacts and all, on top of which you need a CD on which you've paid a tax because it's assumed you're using it for illegal copying. Admittedly, that is not a direct result of DRM, but it still an impact on Fair Use.
Now, what happens when the copyright on those apple DRM'd files expires, in 95 years + the lifetime of the author. Will we still be able to read those DRM'd files? will the DRM magically disappear as the files enter the public domain?
Yes, Apple's DRM is below most people's pain point, and I think it's good that the music companies have started to relax the death grip a little. But all DRM still has a serious knock on effect on our fair use rights, our right of resale of a good, and the entry into the public domain after the expiration of copyright (eventually. Assuming disney fails at some point in their quest to make worldwide copyrights continue to extend in length so that no work ever returns to the public domain - but that's another post)
The problem is, CD's are coming up to same restrictions of apple's DRM, not the other way around. And that DRM ignores the 'wiggle room' that is part of our actual rights.
On top of which, there is genuine breach of copyright, often as part of using those fair use rights. For example, it has been judged in court that you can 'time shift' a broadcasted work as part of your fair use rights. Technicially though, you cannot make a library of that work. So if you were to use your Tivo, or record a song off a radio, or use your tape machine to watch a work later, you're fully within your fair use rights to do so. Because DRM and the 'broadcast flag' don't include that wiggle room, you'll be stopped from doing so. "Ahah" you say. "That's a limitiation of the techonology, it can be fixed". well, that's the point. It's an on/off limitation. Even assuiming the DRM is fixed (unlikely) to allow you to record it for legal timeshifting, you'd only be allowed to watch it once, then the DRM would make it delete itself off the Tivo, as that is what a strict intrepretation of the law demands. Only watched it half way through before the phone rang? Tough.
Don't forget, these industries are the same ones that have accused people (and sued some of them) for 'theft' for singing happy birthday round a campfire, playing music on the radio when there are passengers in the taxi cab, and fastforwarding through the adverts.
Common sense and wiggle room are part of how any system of law works. People break several laws every day, technically (in the UK, just parking your car is technically causing an obstruction, and just have a look at some of the really obscure state laws in the US). Certainly, if we applied driving laws with the same strictness they're trying to apply copyright law, then nobody would be able to drive.
Oh, and by the way, your last point 'if you don't like the terms of use of the product, you don't have to buy it' is not a get out clause for corporations. The recording industry has an effective group monopoly on the production of music. That's why they are often called an oligarchy. since they produce all the recorded music, and additionally are trying to control all outlets of digital distribution as well, there simply isn't a market alternative to their works. If I could buy the same artists' music from different providers with different DRM schemes, at different prices, you might have a point. As it is, they are using DRM to not only enforce their existing rights rigidly, they are using it to give themselves extra restrictions they do not have under the law.
Let me give you one example. Imagine when you bought a book,
Remember kids, it's all fun and games until someone commits wholesale galactic genocide.
Suppose my cousin liked the book. Suppose, as a matter of fact, that my cousin liked your lame college poems so much that he used one to propose to his fiance.
Suppose 50 years later, they look for a copy of that poem, but they can't find it because you've made it illegal for anyone to produce a copy. At that point, I think your "rights" have made claims to the memories and imaginations of other people that it shouldn't have. Once you've released your "thought children" into the world, I think your rights are not so absolute. At that point, they become enmeshed in the thoughts and lives of other people. While I may defend your right to profit from your own creativity, I'd challenge your right to control every outcome of it.
The intent of copyright is to maintain the flow of works into the public domain. The content creators argued that unless there was some period of monopoly on the right to copy, they would all starve and cease to create music, books, etc. So they were granted their temporary monopoly, but works must return to the public domain after that period. So the whole copyright thing is to maintain the flow of works to the public domain, NOT to enrich the temporary owners of the right to copy the works.
(Would people really stop making creative works if there was limited or no monetary reward? I don't think so... look at OSS. Sure some kinds of grotesque works like $1M music videos would become impossible... but... is that actually any loss?)
What has happened in the meanwhile is that the content creators like Disney and the other companies represented by the RIAA and MPAA have fostered the illusion that their precious "intellectual property" is permanently theirs, and anyone who desires free access to it is a pirate and a theif. But the fact is we all are entitled to free access to these works once the copyright monopoly period is up. The only theiving going on is when these evil companies press our representatives to continually extend the copyright monopoly period so the works never reach the public domain.